breezm eyes perfect fit in U.S. market with its 3-D printed glasses

Industry

Published: 15 Jun. 2024, 07:00 Updated: 17 Jun. 2024, 14:32

breezm eyes perfect fit in U.S. market with its 3-D printed glasses

Coptiq co-CEOs and founders Park Hyung-jin, left, and Sung Woo-seok pose for a photo during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at a breezm store in central Seoul on May 27. [PARK SANG-MOON]

[Game Changer]

An Asian American developer walked into a breezm store in New York one day and had a chance encounter with Park Hyung-jin, the founder of the Korean eyewear startup.

“I make six figures a year and couldn’t find a single pair of glasses that fit my face right before, even for a thousand dollars,” Park recalled the customer saying. “So, thank you.”

Park recalled another instance when he asked a Filipino woman from Connecticut, “What has been bothering you about your glasses?” She brightened up, and replied: “Nobody has ever asked me that before.”

Clear sight is a boon often taken for granted, given that human brains perceive about 80 percent of information about their surrounding environment through vision — yet it is not as universally or equally accessible as we may think.

breezm, a personalized eyeglass brand run by Coptiq, uses AI-powered face scanning and 3-D printing technology to make customized glasses that conform to each customer’s facial structure.

“Only a surprisingly few people have access to glasses that fit their facial structure, especially among Asian and African Americans,” said Park, co-CEO of Coptiq.

“Most standard models are designed to fit the Caucasian facial structure, and that is why sunglasses we try on at duty-free stores at airports often keep slipping down our noses,” said Park.

This is where Coptiq started — to make the perfect glasses for everyone.

Coptiq's breezm specializes in personalized eyeglasses, customized for the perfect fit using AI scanning and produced with 3-D printing and laser-cutting technologies.

The value of the global eyewear market was estimated at $161 billion last year, with the U.S. market accounting for $47.4 billion, according to Fortune Business Insights. The market is projected to reach $285.2 billion by 2032.

New players using 3-D printing technology have been expanding their presence recently, including Luxexcel, a European 3-D printed smart lens maker acquired by Meta in 2022.

Park established Coptiq with co-founder Sung Woo-seok in 2017. Before launching breezm, he worked as a marketing specialist at Disney Korea and P&G Korea, and founded the eyewear company ALO in 2006, which he ran as CEO until departing in 2012.

breezm currently has 10 stores in Korea, and opened its first overseas store in Manhattan in March, making inroads into the world’s largest eyewear market rich with ethnic diversity. The company ran a pop-up store in the United States for over a year before the official launch, during which it provided custom glasses to more than 400 customers.

The interior of breezm's Manhattan branch in New York, which opened in March [COPTIQ]

The goal is to open 100 stores across the United States over the next five years.

Coptiq has so far garnered investments worth 11.5 billion won ($8.3 million), with the Series A funding round wrapping up in June of last year. The company plans to begin Series B funding in August.

The Korea JoongAng Daily sat down with Park at breezm’s Euljiro branch in central Seoul to discuss the company's journey so far and its plan ahead.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. What inspired you to enter the personalized eyewear industry?

A. When I visited Japan back in 2004, I was so surprised to see how opticians operated there, wondering why Korean stores couldn’t offer such consumer-centric services. Later when I was mulling where to take my career next, I thought, ‘Since there is no consumer-centric brand in Korea’s eyewear industry yet, why not start it?’

That’s how I established ALO in 2006. By 'consumer-centric,' I mean consumers wouldn’t feel uncomfortable when browsing through the displays in stores and sellers would have a transparent and consistent price policy.

Glasses are a crucial part of a person’s daily life — and by the time I founded ALO, the trend was to consider glasses as a fashion item.

As for breezm, there were two reasons.

When I was leading ALO, we had to place orders for horn-rimmed glasses with Chinese suppliers, which took about eight months for delivery and made quality control really difficult. But it wasn’t like we could just build a factory in Korea considering how much manual labor and craftsmanship it requires.

That’s where 3-D printing came in. At that time, 3-D printing was still at an early stage, but I thought the technology could be a new tool to change the manufacturing process and drive efficiency.

Secondly, I was in my 30s when I established ALO and founded Coptiq in my mid-40s; while I previously focused on glasses as a fashion item, by then I realized just how significant and helpful glasses are in everyday life.

So I came to the realization that by using 3-D printing and personal customization, we could provide a clearer vision for our customers — glasses are, after all, to help see things clearer, and such technologies can help with that.

What is breezm’s competitive edge against other customized, 3-D printed eyewear brands?

In the whole eyewear market, 3-D printed glasses account for only a very small share. Since we also use laser-cut titanium-based frames as well as 3-D printed frames, we are somewhere in between the two categories.

There have been several eyewear makers that came up with new technologies, but many eventually failed because while eyeglass frames may look easy to produce, it is actually a unique product that requires a lot of domain knowledge.

Finding a balance between cutting-edge technologies and conventional glasses-manufacturing techniques is actually very hard, and there are only a handful of countries in the world that can do both. In Europe, Italy, France and maybe Germany have manufacturing capabilities, while Korea, Japan and China have the capacity among Asian countries.

New technologies can lead to better end products only with domain knowledge, an ecosystem and craftsmanship in eyeglass making. Korea, in particular, has a very competitive market. There is no other country in the world where customers can get a new pair in only about 30 minutes, which makes the local industry highly competent.

We also have a competitive edge in price thanks to a streamlined distribution process. And we have no wasted inventory because our products are made after an order is placed, leading to cost reduction.

breezm offers an AI-based glasses frame recommendation service. With competitors such as Warby Parker offering similar virtual services using AI technology, how does breezm set itself apart in terms of digital services?

One of the strengths that rival companies such as Warby Parker came up with was a virtual try-on service.

But the problem with the service was that it was basically based on analogue products, which means that the service providers had to scan a real-life product manufactured in China and model it in 3-D shape for the virtual try-on. The transition from 3-D to 2-D and back to 3-D makes it difficult to give customers a realistic experience when trying on glasses in a virtual space.

As for breezm, our products are already modeled in 3-D from the design stage, and therefore can be acutely adjusted according to the customer’s face during a virtual try-on. It’s like the difference between a gas-powered car with additional advanced technologies and an electric car, which is built in a fundamentally different way, so to speak.

When making a glasses frame, the design is usually drawn on flat paper, which is later sent to a craftsman for production — that is how glasses have been produced for the past 300 years.

If a wearer has a different facial structure from what is considered standard, they may have to endure a less fashionable — and less comfortable — glasses-wearing experience.

In order to solve such issues, we fundamentally changed the process. We first customize the design in line with a customer's face, and send the design to the factory to produce it.

Moreover, we are currently refining our mobile app service, and plan to officially launch the app in the latter half of the year. Customers can access our face-scanning and virtual try-on services, as well as design recommendations, through the app.

What made the U.S. market an attractive destination for breezm?

The U.S. eyewear market is the largest in the world, and the most diverse one as well.

Designs for glasses frames actually vary significantly depending on the country of origin, and the most standard and well-distributed products are usually designed based on Caucasian facial structures. However, there is a wide range of variation even within Caucasian facial structures, not to mention among the non-Caucasian population.

Koreans in general may not have experienced major discomfort using glasses because we, along with our neighboring countries, are known for strong glasses-manufacturing capabilities. But there certainly is unmet demand with discomfort from conventional glasses frames in Korea as well.

The United States, on the other hand, is a whole different story — surprisingly few people have access to glasses that fit their facial structure, especially among Asian and African Americans.

Therefore, there is strong market demand for custom glasses. If it is a matter of choice in Korea, it is more of a necessity in the United States, in my understanding.

How do you think a “Made in Korea” brand should position itself in the eyewear market to compete against cost-competitive Chinese companies and European rivals with strong brand reputations?

Since the traditional eyewear market is dominated by European legacy brands, we put a lot of thought into how we should position ourselves in the market, considering that brand reputation plays a crucial role in the market. One of the questions was ‘should we put an emphasis on being from Korea or not?’

What I learned after meeting with customers in the United States so far is that we should be proud of being Korean at this point, especially in terms of technological capabilities. If our forte was traditional products, that may not have worked in our favor, but we are presenting our products with a focus on advanced technologies like 3-D printing, 3-D scanning and laser-cutting techniques.

‘We are not an old-fashioned brand; we are here to put customers in the center and make your experience more comfortable with cutting-edge technologies’ — that is the position we have taken in the U.S. market, especially with Korean culture gaining popularity overseas.

On the other hand, from a broader perspective, I believe Korea needs to make a bigger investment in 3-D printing.

I have been attending the 3-D printing trade show in Frankfurt every year, and the event doubles in size every time we visit. One of the biggest factors is the accelerating reshoring efforts of European nations, as they are trying to move away from China, and 3-D printing is the only way for them to fill the gap in manufacturing capacity. But Korea has little to no presence in the sector.

Considering that China has been making strides in various sectors with significantly improved technological capabilities, Korea should put more effort into maintaining its position as a market leader in manufacturing.

What is Coptiq’s ultimate goal?

The most important indicator of performance we share within our company is customer satisfaction. We conduct a satisfaction survey 30 days after a purchase, but recently, we began to conduct another satisfaction survey after a year.

We believe that glasses serve as a part of the human body. Due to a lack of awareness of the important role glasses play in our daily lives, customers often lose productivity using uncomfortable and mismatched glasses.

So we wish to make glasses the best at what they are supposed to do — helping wearers see things more clearly, and making them look better, to eventually contribute to an enhanced quality of life.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]